Divine Fire (15 page)

There was definitely something there. Not exactly wheezing, but…

Brice wanted to run away; she truly did. But just as she began to back up, the devil called to her again.

Brice, don’t you want to know what’s in there?

No, not really. Not this time.

Yet, slowly, reluctantly, she knelt down and put her eye to the keyhole.

Her gaze was immediately pinched and seemingly trapped by the narrow lock she peered through, but she saw enough in that gap to frighten her into stillness.

He—it—had a flashlight, which it held awkwardly as it searched Damien’s desk, rifling through the precious antique papers with a carelessness that made Brice want to scream.

The light was dim, but she could see that its skin was a sour shade of bile, and was badly pitted. It looked more like an insect’s carapace or a reptile’s skin than something that belonged on a human. Brice realized suddenly that she was looking at scars, not pores or scales—the same type of scars that Damien bore, but which had turned septic and were overlaid many, many times until almost no undamaged flesh showed through.

Dippel? It had to be.

She stared, repulsed. How many layers of scar tissue were there? A hundred? More? How many times had Dippel inflicted electrocution on himself as he searched for immortality?

Brice shuddered. There was something else wrong with him too. His limbs were unbalanced, like those of a fiddler crab. His left arm was enormous, more than twice the size of his right and about eight inches longer, and it clicked like a crunching snail shell whenever it made contact with a hard object.

Brice had an impulse to spray him with insecticide, to see him crushed under a giant fly swatter or stuck to the world’s largest pest strip.

As though sensing this sudden hostility, Dippel turned toward the heavy carved door where Brice knelt, and he seemed to look into her widened eye as he cocked his head, listening to her breathe. The flashlight went out, leaving them both in darkness, but in that last moment of illumination she saw into his eyes and was terrified.

She froze as any prey animal did when the predator neared. Her heart beat harder, counting out her fears with every painful thump. Dread escaped with every breath. She was grateful her exhalations had no color. It was bad enough that she could feel it gathering around her in a clammy cloud; had it tint, she would have been stained yellow with cowardice.

Chirp
went the smoke detector, breaking the silence. The red light flashed on and off, assaulting her eyes with its brief flare and perhaps betraying her to Dippel.

The monster didn’t move. Neither did Brice. She stayed perfectly still, not blinking or even breathing, and eventually he looked away. The flashlight was switched back on and Dippel continued his search.

Brice slumped. She closed her twitching eyelids on the sudden outpouring of tears, trying to shut out the angry red light. But she couldn’t hide from it. The red flash beat against her thin lids and her aching brain, giving her no relief.

Done being skeptical and logical and reasonable—perhaps done being sane—Brice gave in to the beginnings of panic. Reason said to stay calm and unemotional, and quiet, but damn it! This was
her
crisis. She’d speculate freely, marvel, thrill, and be terrified, if she wanted to.

She’d also have to find another way downstairs to the security office. If she could get to the surveillance cameras, maybe they would still be working and she could find Damien and the guards. Hadn’t he said there was a backup generator that ran the emergency lights on the stairs? They needed light, and they needed to know how many people—how many monsters—they faced.

But where were the stairs? Surely Damien’s building had to have some exit besides the elevator in case of a fire. There were codes, damn it!

Fire.

She looked up at the flashing fire alarm. Stupid! They’d been so dumb! There
was
another way out. Fire escapes were usually located outside—probably starting on the roof. And Damien would have one, even in the penthouse. Yes, it would be cold and icy and not the safest thing to climb in a snowstorm. But it was better than staying in the building with Dippel.

Brice took a deep breath and pushed the incipient hysteria away.

She had to go back around to the other side of the library where the metal staircase was and get up to the door that opened onto the roof. It was a bit risky, but the door and stairs were screened by a thick stand of weeping figs. Dippel was busy searching the desk. Maybe he wouldn’t see her when she sneaked inside.

Maybe he’d even be gone.

Brice turned and ran away silently, grateful for the thick carpet in the hall that deadened her footsteps.

This time her shadow pursued her in the eerie red light, but it looked no less frightened running in the opposite direction.

Damien found himself thinking of strange things as he forced open the dining room window. Worry about Brice was a natural thought to be on his mind. But thinking about love—specifically and generally—was not.

Yet that was what occupied his brain as he stood in the snow, breaking into his own apartment.

Love, every time he’d felt it, had transformed him, and in ways he hadn’t expected and sometimes hadn’t liked. It was a brave person—or a foolish one—who submitted himself to such alteration when he couldn’t know the outcome of the encounter.

He’d learned something else, too, over the course of the years: Egos couldn’t love. Vanity did not adore anything but itself. Pride did not cherish. Intellect could understand but did not feel. When love came, it was from the soul. It
was
the soul. And it could not be controlled, calibrated or manipulated.

People spoke all the time of a fear of intimacy, but that wasn’t the problem at all. People feared change—change of their circumstances, change of their personality, change of the soul.

He had feared, too, for a very long time. But not now. Faced with possibility of disaster, the only thing he dreaded in this moment was that he would lose Brice before he had a chance to know if he truly loved her. And if she loved—or could ever love—him in return.

Frustrated with the frozen lock, Damien slid his shirt over his hand and put a fist through the pane of glass nearest the latch. The small tinkle of glass spilling onto the rug was barely noticeable. Or so he hoped.

Damien reached inside, not being particularly careful of the glass’s rough edges. He would heal. Brice might not.

“Which other cities do you favor with your noble presence?” Brice had asked Damien last night when they ran out of boring Victorians to discuss and had moved on to more personal material. “You know I’m from Charleston by way of Savannah—by way of San Francisco?”

“I’m glad you’re adaptable,” he said, tucking her hair behind her ears and encouraging her to snuggle closer. “Frankly, outside of New York, I avoid the East Coast. Too many of the Puritans’ descendants about still trying to burn sinners. I like New Orleans and San Francisco primarily. It’s fun living in cities where instead of
purging
oddballs—the self-proclaimed vampires and witches—they give them cable-access television shows and treat them as tourist attractions.”

“When were you last in San Francisco?” she asked.

“I was there in the sixties.”

“The nineteen sixties?” she clarified.

“Yes, but I was there in the eighteen sixties, too, back when it was the Barbary Coast. Anyone with an ounce of dash put on a loud tapestry waistcoat and went west.”

It sounded like a joke, but Brice was now sure that he’d meant it.

She was also sure that she felt like bursting into tears as she inched her way up the library’s cold iron staircase, feeling her way in the dark. She was being dead silent, though the room now seemed empty.

Was this really happening? Couldn’t I still be asleep, caught in a nightmare?

She didn’t like small spaces, but a part of her wanted to hide in the dark, to just stay in some deep, safe shadow until it was day, because surely normal people would come soon. Even with the power out. Even with unplowed streets. Even on Christmas Day.

But there was Damien. Or rather, there wasn’t Damien. She didn’t know where he was, or if he was in trouble. And she couldn’t run away without him, couldn’t hide when he might be in danger or hurt.

It couldn’t be the way it had been with her husband, she wouldn’t lose anyone else while she sat by and watched. Particularly not because she imagined herself to be helpless. This wasn’t like the last time. She was whole and mobile. There were things she could do, if she didn’t give in to terror.

Brice scolded herself fiercely for even thinking about taking the coward’s way out and finding Damien’s vault. Fear was the worst enemy a person could have. She knew that firsthand. Her husband’s death had felt like the end of her. But it hadn’t been. She had survived to live day to day, moment to moment. When one painful breath ran out, she drew another. And then another. Grief and fear had tried to crush her then, but they hadn’t succeeded. She hadn’t been destroyed by crippling emotion then. She wouldn’t be destroyed by it now. Neither would Damien.

But she was at her last retreat, unless there was some obvious way down from the rooftop. If Dippel followed her now, if she was cornered, she would have no choice except to shoot him.

Assuming that would do anything useful. It might not, if what the journal said was true—and she now more than half believed it was.

Brice shook her head in denial on this thought, unwilling to believe this last horrible thing could be real. Dippel had to be killable.

Muttering prayers to unspecified deities, she crept toward the French doors where she had seen Damien perching on that first night. She prayed they were unlocked, because she didn’t think she had the nerve to climb back down the steep stairs and search the desk for the key.

Chapter Twelve

I have traversed the seat of war in the Peninsula; I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never, under the most despotic of infidel governments, have I beheld such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return to the heart of this Christian country.

—Letter from Byron to Lord Holland before addressing Parliament

I have no doubt that my son is a great man. I simply pray that he may be a happy and prudent one as well.

—Letter from Byron’s mother to her attorney

I am like a tiger. If I miss my first spring, I go growling back to my jungle.

—From Byron’s letters, November 18, 1820

Brice paused on the stairs, hands clenching the iron rail. Dippel had come back while she was halfway to the upper tier of the library. And now there was a second creature in the apartment below.

It was hard not to sweat and wheeze when she could actually feel her pulse in her throat trying to gag her with fear.

Don’t look up! Don’t look up! There’s nobody here but us books and shadows.

Lightning flared, lighting up her aerie, and thunder crashed right behind it. The iron staircase seemed to shiver beneath her. Was it afraid of Dippel too? Could metal be scared?

More likely it was the storm. Lightning could well be hitting the roof now, sending its hot fingers into the building’s iron bones.

And into her, while she perched on the stairs, or a fire escape? The thought just added terror to terror. Brice had to fight hard not to close her eyes and whimper.

The monstrous soldier who had appeared and was seemingly taking orders from Dippel wasn’t wearing jackboots, but Brice felt he should have been. Perhaps it was his gait. He walked stiffly, almost as if his knees were fused. His long, misshapen face also twitched erratically above his lip, as though some living thing were heaving under the skin, some parasite that wanted out. It was also apparent from her vantage point that Dippel’s therapy hadn’t cured the creature’s baldness.

Dippel was growing agitated. He said something loud in German and waved his larger arm about. The limb looked hideous on his body. Had he stolen it off some champion arm-wrestler? Or a gorilla?

The second creature belched a reply. Spittle and some things that Brice imagined were maggots spewed from its mouth and onto Dippel. The doctor didn’t seem to notice, or else he didn’t care.

That was a sort of plus, Brice thought hysterically. If she vomited on the doctor, maybe he wouldn’t be angry.

As useful as it would have been to hear their conversation, Brice could no longer bear being close to the monsters and that unpleasant odor of rot and chemicals that surrounded them. This wasn’t her venue, not the place where she could shine. She was not a person given to gladiatorial risk—acts of physical and insane courage, even in the single-minded pursuit of escape. All she wanted was to get away without confrontation.

And to find Damien.

And to not be seen. That most of all. But she had to get away from the monsters—
right now
. Before she threw up.

Brice took a slow breath, then continued her slow upward retreat to the roof, being more careful than ever to make no sound. Her eyes never left the two creatures on the floor as she backed up the twisting stairs.

There came a crack and then a loud whine followed by a second sharp crack that alarmed the ears. Splinters of shattered stone splattered Damien in a sharp, short hail.

He dove behind Karen’s desk, cursing himself for not being more cautious. The upper tiers of the library were the perfect place for an ambush, and he should have thought of this. Now the silence was broken and the slim hope of remaining unnoticed gone.

He hadn’t heard these sounds for a long while, but one never really forgot the sick thrill of being under fire, of standing at the border that separated life from extinction while some hostile person tried to hurry you over the edge at the point of a gun.

Interesting to note—there was a clear, almost operatic echo that followed the first crack. That sound, combined with the direction of the stones, told him where his attacker was shooting from in the long gallery that encircled the library dome.

The second bit of data was analyzed even as he rolled for deeper cover: The shooter was using a rifle. A long one. Probably a Remington. A handgun would have sounded more like a bark. The clap had been much louder. This fellow wasn’t larking about with a pellet gun or a lady’s purse pistol. But then, he’d already known that.

A second bullet went into the floor near his foot, this time muffled. The shot came quickly, but not quickly enough to catch him. Damien looked at the bloom of copper in the carpet and thought,
It looks pretty nestled in the rug. Far prettier there than lodged in my body
. He knew this from past experience. He’d been shot before. Several times, in fact. Neither he nor the bullets were improved by the experience.

The Remington was an odd choice of gun, though. Old-fashioned. Not that he wasn’t thankful the creature didn’t have an Uzi.

Damien reflexively checked his own gun. Usually, a pistol was no match for a rifle when handled by an average marksman, but he was not an average shot. And his target was making no effort to stand behind cover. The hulking creature just stood there in the open, blazing away as if he were invulnerable.

And maybe he was.

A third point—and the best as far as Damien was concerned: The attacker wasn’t a good shot and had been wasting ammunition on these unsuccessful attacks. Soon he would need to reload. That would be Damien’s moment of opportunity.

Even if the creature was a crack shot, Damien would still take him on. Because it wasn’t Damien’s day to die. He and Brice had things to do, places to see, people to find. He was going to live for a long time to come—they both were. Other people might be questioning themselves about now, wondering if Fate had caught up with them, wondering if it was time to let go and go gently into that dark night. But not Damien. Life had always been his choice, his goal—his destiny even. Let others give up, he never would. He loved almost everything about the human condition, the whole fabulous floor show that was humanity—the good, the bad, the average, the sublime.

So, damn you all.

Damien took a deep breath and then another, preparing for this last battle by night. He did not hurry. He did not let himself rage.

Soon his eyes were readjusted to the dark. The prebattle pep talk was over. The creature had run out of bullets. There was no flag to salute, no stirring speech to make, no loved ones to kiss. It was time to go.

Damien rolled from behind the desk and onto his feet, aiming and then firing in one smooth motion.

The eyes. They were the best target
.

He looked up, aimed for the twin spots of yellowish white that peered down from the railing, and pulled the trigger.

Dippel and the creature were finally gone. She could open the door.

Brice forced the door open against the drifted snow and wind, then made herself step into the cold, stormy night that frightened her almost as much as Dippel.

We’ll die out here
, whimpered the part of her that feared the storm.

We’ll die if we stay inside
, answered the part that feared Dippel more.

A sheet of loosely woven ice crystals immediately peeled off the roof and rose up like a ghost, reaching for her with cold arms. Brice flinched back, stumbling on one of the ridges of frozen water that rose like a dune every eighteen inches or so. She avoided its clutch by stepping back into the comparatively warm doorway, and was relieved when it came apart and fell back to the ground with a soft shattering sound.

It was just snow. Nothing more.

Hands trembling, she closed the door quietly and began searching for the fire escape—which had to be there. It was mandatory on all residential buildings, wasn’t it? She clung to the wall for balance as she threaded the strange frozen dunes that looked like ripples on a pond. Brice ducked down whenever she came to a window, crawling on her hands and knees over the brittle frost; she didn’t want her silhouette to block out the light and give her position away to anyone who might be looking up.

She shivered violently as she moved. Lightning was lighting up the horizon, and the wind cut like an ice knife, tearing through her clothes and into her skin. It seemed Mother Nature was in league with the doctor and making a serious attempt to kill her.

A plane passed overhead, its tiny windows alight, silhouetting a small army of heads. Brice had the mad impulse to rush out into the open, waving her arms and screaming. But she would never be seen by the plane. It wasn’t likely that anyone would notice the small block of darkness where Ruthven Tower lay, let alone a pale woman waving in the snow atop it. And even if they did, they wouldn’t understand her message or be able to reach her before the monsters did.

It was hard to watch the plane go, though.

Damien stepped over the toppled body and picked up the Remington. It had been a long fall, and the creature had landed on its feet. The leg bones had shattered into yellow kindling and matchsticks. The creature’s form on the way down had been imperfect, but it had really aced the landing. Damien had to give it a 9.5 for the flip dismount.

The bloody lump moved.

Damien stepped closer. The damned thing should be dead—its head was almost gone, along with the bottom twenty inches of its legs—but the body was still twitching, the hands trying to grasp at something.

The rifle barrel of the Remington lying some three feet away glinted in the moonlight. He wasn’t fond of rifles. Perhaps it was his nineteenth-century sensibilities, but rifles seemed brutishly aggressive and inelegant. However, this wasn’t the sort of night when you refused Fate’s offerings. Not if you wanted to live.

The rifle was useless without ammunition, though. Damien knelt and started searching the patchwork corpse for extra bullets. He noted, as he shoved the shirt aside to reach the pants pockets—pants from a tuxedo, unless he missed his guess—that some of the corpse’s wounds were barely fused together. It was apparently a recent creation of Dippel’s, perhaps made when the doctor realized he would need help in taking out the poet who had turned warrior.

Damien worked quickly in his search, avoiding the creature’s grasping hands and with one ear turned toward the door. He didn’t want to be surprised a second time. He might not be as lucky in escaping the next ambush.

Damn
—he had to get to Brice. He’d seen her slip outside, a small shadow slinking around the glass dome that crowned the building like the top of a wedding cake. It was the best place for her to be, with bullets flying below, but she wouldn’t last long out in the cold. Especially not if anyone else had followed her while he was occupied with this creature.

Brice moved slowly. She had no choice. As though aware of her presence, the storm had suddenly reawakened and shifted around to follow her. The first thin flakes of the new assault, driven by the northeast wind, were running hard and almost parallel to the rooftop. The bitter air stream and stinging snow left her nearly blind as she finished her circuit on the east side of the building. The bottom terrace had had no fire escape.

Knowing it was probably futile, she had still climbed up the iron ladder to the next tier that ringed the dome. Staggering from the minimal shelter of iron support to iron support, she relied upon the diminishing feeling in her ungloved hands and booted feet to tell her if she was straying from the edge of the steep-pitched dome that crowned the library.

The moonlight that came and went with the furious, rolling clouds was both a blessing and a curse. It lit her way so that she did not trip over the frozen furrows of ice. It also lit her way so that others might see and follow. Looking back frequently, Brice kept the steep-sided glass slope beneath her left hand and shuffled forward.

She wondered: If she had to, could she manage to climb up the thing? Could her attackers? And was there anything up there except more of the sharp iron pickets that decorated every metal seam that joined the dome’s glass panels? Also, would it hold her weight or would she fall through, cut to ribbons before her body shattered on the marble floor some hundred feet below?

A hundred feet?

Yes, it was about that. Many stories, in any event. Not something she would be likely to survive.

Brice turned the corner, escaping the worst of the wind. She was careful near the chimney stacks that disrupted the roof’s frozen floor. She counted five, all but one cold and smokeless. She wished that the one belching smoke were larger, so she could hide in its warm shadow. She also wished passionately that the roof had more than a thigh-high wall around it. The catwalk was more ornamental than functional and narrow enough to give even a surefooted feline a moment’s pause. Especially in the dark and covered with ice.

“Just keep moving,” she whispered.

She was more than three-quarters of the way around the building now and had found no sign of escape. She wondered if all else failed, could she burrow into the snow near the king gargoyle’s feet and perhaps have her little igloo be mistaken for a set of very large toes?

There was noise in the elevator shaft, and yet another creature at the base of the stairs. Damien hesitated for a moment, weighing what was best to do. Gunshots would be loud, perhaps summoning others—not an advisable thing to do. Sighing, he slipped his pistol into the waistband of his pants.

He crept up silently on the creature and then went in fast, coming up behind the patchwork man in a rush of uncoiling muscles. Just as he had been trained to do, he hit the median nerve to paralyze the arm that held the gun. Damien used a lot of force, more than he would have on a normal man. It should have caused enough pain to leave the creature vomiting, but the assassin didn’t react. At all.